


how it was and how it will be: memory and fantasy

by Johnny_Joestar



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Blood and Gore, Drug Use, Established Relationship, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, M/M, POV Ben Hargreeves, POV Second Person, Pre-Canon, Pseudo-Incest, Trans Ben Hargreeves, Trans Male Character, Transphobia, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:16:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26796487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Johnny_Joestar/pseuds/Johnny_Joestar
Summary: Ben loves Klaus in a way he can't describe. In a way that chases the ghosts away, even for a fleeting moment.---Ben and Klaus centric.
Relationships: Ben Hargreeves/Klaus Hargreeves
Comments: 1
Kudos: 24





	how it was and how it will be: memory and fantasy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [OllieTamale](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OllieTamale/gifts).



> First fic on Ao3 in a long, long time. This is a gift to one of my closest friends and one of the coolest people I know. I love you bitch.
> 
> NOTE: This is inspired by private rp talks. The writing style is inspired by Richard Silken's "Crush". Please read it if you like gay shit and metaphors.

The monster claws at your insides. Scoops up your guts and lets them slide between the tentacles like sand through a child's fingers. Pain from the needle and ink on your wrist intensify the feeling of something pressing against the inside of your skin and threatening to burst _out._ The monster is you and isn't you and the you-that's-not-you is very, very certain that you are going to die.

Four other lab rats avoid your accusatory gaze. A silent confession for the you-that's-not-you. Your four brothers are charged for crimes against one of you. It's unclear and your mind is fogged from pain. Two, four, maybe more. Tentacles reach, irrationally and find their targets and tear, rip, shred. Performing as judge, jury, and executioner.

You're covered in enough blood to stain your skin red, and Klaus's hand on your neck is hardly a comfort when you just killed him.

* * *

You wake up and find the blood is sweat and the hand on your neck is actually Klaus's lips.

You turn and face the smell of booze and what you think is vomit and find that feeling again, deep in the pit of your stomach and binding your chest.

You love Klaus, you think. In some abstract, unexplainable way. The you-that's-not-you seems to love him enough to want you to be stained in _him_ forever, if your night terrors are to be believed. Love isn't destructive, you think. You hope. You love Klaus in some abstract and unexplainable way and you hope, pray it isn't in the way the not-you-you loves him.

 _You've been crying in your sleep again._ And you shouldn't be surprised to see Klaus on the precipice of addiction and sleep.

 _Yeah._ Because you can't deny it and it's a wonder the whole house hasn't woken up from your wailing.

He gives you a look somewhere between _what was it now_ and _there's vodka in the closet_ that draws you in. There's a magnet in your brain that finds a polar opposite in Klaus as he rests a hand safely on your hip, beneath bruised ribs and a reality you don't want to face. And suddenly you want to sleep about as much as you don't want to sleep and the not-you-you purrs loud enough that you feel it in the back of your skull.

* * *

You find it easy to melt into his touch after missions. Kisses are greedy, open-mouthed and saturated with the sharp tang of iron and cheap booze. You dig your nails into the jut of his hip and sigh into his clavicle. _I'm glad you're okay. Yeah, I know. Can go out somewhere later tonight if you want._

You have your cake and eat it too, you guess. Klaus is tipsy enough to chase away a few ghosts at the very least, and you chase the others away with a kiss to his jaw and your free hand pressing into the nape of his neck. You'll both get wasted tonight, probably. Klaus promises you the world in that he promises a handful of pills and a space in his bed tonight. And, for once, the not-you-you is quiet.

It's not an _addiction_ as much as it's a bad habit precariously balanced by a tightrope. You take pills to take the edge off the deaths of the day and he's curled at your hip after blacking out. You lied to him when you told him you don't _do that shit_ and maybe you'll feel far more guilty later when he counts way less pills than he had at the start of the night.

He never says anything.

* * *

_Number fucking One_ is scadalized by everything because he's a fucking hypocrite. 

Tension is thick between the five of you and you cut it with cheap silverware and shovel it and Mom's breakfast down your throat. It's an unsaid challenge for Luther to say _jack fucking shit_. You're the _calm one. Number_ _6, who always keeps his cool._ Not-you-you is itching to get out and rip his arm off when he opens his fucking mouth, but you drown it out with a hashbrown face made of ketchup.

 _Victimless murder, or something._ And Klaus's laugh is as hollow as your unsaid threats to Luther.

* * *

Klaus is your moon in the way the moon has cycles and appears and disappears over the day. The moon isn't always there, out of sight at times and spending time with other people. And though you love the night you wouldn't want to spend your days in darkness.

So you don't worry when Klaus goes out without you, because Klaus has secrets and other people and a _life_ just like you. You don't want to pin Klaus to a board and dig through his insides, and you know he shares the sentiment. He throws Allison's old coat over his shoulders and lights a cigarette. Gives you a goodbye kiss to the corner of your mouth as you flip through a worn poetry book.

You sit criss-cross in bed and think of the ghosts in the house as Allison runs down the hallway with Luther in tow. As the low _shunk_ of knives hitting drywall tells you Diego is awake and Vanya plucks the strings of her violin in the next room over. Death is about as foreign a concept as the not-you-you's thought process. Familiar enough to be the back of your hand or the tattoo on your wrist and foreign enough to fill your unmedicated nights with sweat and tears. You don't know if it would be a comfort or not, but you don't think you want to die. Because then Klaus would be…

You crush the thought with the low _thud_ of the book closing. Poe is too melancholic to be thought-provoking.

Instead, you pick another poetry book on intimacy and two boys loving each other. Today the bandages you use aren't convincing enough when your voice is lilted and your other siblings still slip up on _he, him, his._ When your father clicks his tongue at bruised and broken ribs. _What were you thinking, Number 6?_ When Pogo looks at you with supposed _empathy,_ one question away from a _miss_ and a lecture on _destroying your body._ You'll cut your hair in full view of the others until they _understand._

It's easy to slip into the shoes of a nameless lover who doesn't have to convince anyone of who he is. Who he loves. When Klaus comes home you take the role of the lover. You kiss the underside of his wrist. You tell him it's okay as you rub circles into his palm. You'd chase off every ghost if you could. You tell him as much while you hold him.

You don't ask. He doesn't tell.

* * *

Death isn't anything like they say in movies or in books. There's no warmth, there's no light flooding your vision. You're torn open: ribs and lungs and intestines illuminated in the sun. A warning for your siblings painted in blood and gore. You wish you had died instantly.

Instead you feel the cold seep in bit by bit. You're empty and hollow and the not-you-you is screaming in the back of your skull. It sounds like it's dying with you. You think you stopped breathing thirty seconds ago. Maybe more. Your thoughts are sluggish and slowing to a stop, though everything is very, very loud. 

Allison is screaming for help. Diego retches somewhere out of sight. You don't know where Luther went. Klaus is, thankfully, gone. You think. He doesn't come out into the action.

You're proven wrong when he circles into your rapidly darkening vision, and the last thing you see is abject horror across the face of the boy you loved.


End file.
